Oh, I remember that, OHLD! How funny was that!! Well, not at the time, I'm sure, but now it is! Didn't you end up hooking up here on BYC and getting some pictures or something? Here we don't have house to house mail delivery - the entire town and surrounding farms and ranches all have to go to the post office to pick up mail. Not a mailbox one in the entire community! So I could pay extra until my check bounced and I won't get that kind of to-my-door service.

What happened is I found out the lady who took them was a member here, but I don't remember her name, she sent me photos of the chicks and of her family, she was so nice, I have been to scared to join BYC until recently, a long term lurker I was.

My driveway is 900 feet long and there's no mail box at the end. I'm like Blooie, out in the middle of nowhere and the post office doesn't deliver to my place. There's a bank of mail boxes six miles from my house down next to the highway, but when I order chicks, I need to meet the delivery truck when it pulls in at the post office in town early in the morning.

One time I got fired from the medical clinic where I received my so-called medical care because they got tired of all my complaining about how terrible the place was run. They sent me a registered letter that I had to sign for telling me I had been fired, but the post office wasn't open so I didn't get the letter. So I showed up for an appointment and got fired in person.

Oh, @azygous I sure do remember your frustration over on the Mama Heating Pad thread when you got so many roos and had so many issues! Sitting in front of the computer reading all of the bumps you went through was hard! Didn't they at one time tell you (or am I thinking of someone else) that you had to wait until they were practically crowing before they'd do anything? If that was you, you have shown once again what a gracious and kind nature you have. I probably wouldn't have been as nice!

All I know is that my experiences have been excellent with MPC and I'm a forever customer. But Alex, if you are reading this, in the same posts where I've been praising MPC to the sky, it just seems so odd to me that most of us have nothing but glowing things to say about customer service and others have said they thought the customer service was deplorable. I've mentioned many times that I didn't understand how that could be, and said that if there was one thing that MPC might need to change it sounded like it might be better consistency in how problems are handled. As much as I hate to say it, some of that negativity could be from folks who are, shall we say, difficult to please no matter what you do. But I don't think that's always the case, either.

Personally I've had no issues whatsoever. My very first chick order was not good because the post office's tracking information said that they had been delivered on a Wednesday but in reality on that day they were sitting on the loading dock in Casper, Wyoming during an unexpected cold snap with sub zero temperatures. I even took a printout of the tracking that said they'd been delivered to our postmistress, who called the sorting facility in Casper. Yep, there they were. When I finally got the call to go pick them on Thursday up it was 19 degrees below zero! But when our postmistress here had called Casper looking for them, she made them put a sign on the box that said, "CARRIER, TRANSPORT IN CAB"! When I got them the sign was still on the box. I wondered how that poor driver felt having 19 live chicks peeping in protest alongside him as he drove the 5 hours from Casper to here in the dark on slick roads! I lost a few of those chicks, but the majority of them were just fine, all pullets just as I'd ordered, the correct breeds and are still laying well for me today! MPC made it good, although it wasn't even their fault. The second time ordered I wanted 8 Buff Brahma pullets. I got 8 strong, healthy Buff Brahma pullets, even though once again the tracking information said they were already delivered on Wednesday and I didn't get them until Thursday. I just ordered hatching eggs for the first time last month.

The one thing I've always wondered about, and I know this is a post office issue, is why we have to pay for express shipping knowing full well we aren't getting express shipping. That's always mystified me. Even on the MPC website there is a disclaimer written that says that the normal rules for Express Shipping don't apply to shipping chicks and the PO won't honor their usual guarantees. So we have to pay for it anyway? As I said, that's a postal service thing, but here we are so far out in the boonies that there isn't even any point in ordering or sending something out Overnight - we just don't have that service here. Every order that was supposed to take no more than 3 days has taken 4, yet they aren't responsible for chick losses - the hatchery is. Makes no sense to me!

As far as sexing bantams, I've also heard that that can be dicey. Speaking for myself, I have to confess that if I'd ordered them and had even a 90% sexing accuracy with them, I'd probably be okay with that. They can be tough.

I'm sorry that your first experience was less than ideal but I'm thrilled you are still a fan. Yes, I also find it very concerning that there are such inconsistent opinions of the customer service at My Pet Chicken. The owners strive to stand out as superior in customer service and have allotted Trust Funds for each employee to use when the situation doesn't fall within My Pet Chicken's already generous guidelines. There are certain situations we have to stick to firmly but we do try to make our customers happy. :) I hope that knowing this, if there is a problem with a My Pet Chicken customer service agent that you send me a PM so I can look into it and help anyway I can.

All orders of fewer than 15 chicks are automatically shipped via the speediest service that the Post Office offers for baby chicks: USPS Express Mail. Orders of greater than 15 chicks are can be shipped by USPS Priority Mail or USPS Express Mail--your choice! Your chicks can arrive any day from Tuesday to Friday of your scheduled shipping week. Exactly which day they arrive at your location will depend on which day they were hatched, and how quickly the Post Office services your area. It sounds like you live quite a ways away from town, I'm so sorry that it takes the chicks so long to get to you.